Off the Record! Limerick's own Georgina Miller is flying high

WHEN the writer and performer Georgina Miller was travelling the world, becoming paralysed was not on her bucket list.
With her new play, she  tells her story.

The Ashbrook native was ticking adventures off her bucket list when everything went wrong.

“I became very ill with a rare autoimmune condition in which there was ascending paralysis from my feet up through my body.”
Freefalling is a story where time is of the essence. “The paralysis was spreading up towards my torso and my lungs, I would have needed a ventilator to keep me alive – and that’s when the drama really starts.”

Based on the writer’s personal experience, Freefalling is Georgina’s one woman show. From jumping out of planes and diving with sharks to being stranded on a tiny island in need of a ventilator, the play captures both the joy of living and the terror of being trapped in a body that refuses to function, while being simultaneously daring and hopeful.

Speaking of the performance, Georgina says: “It’s sort of a story in two halves. We see the freedom and the enjoyment of the early parts of the travels, followed swiftly by the darkness of everything that came after.”

Looking back on her creative process, she points out that writing the play was therapeutic.  

“I started writing the piece during Covid, I got a small bursary from the Belltable to initially develop the idea. I had always wanted to make something with it, it’s a really good story, if I do say so myself,” she smiles.

When she first attempted to put her experience into words two years after the incident, she felt a bit too close to the story. Georgina believes distance and time were necessary to have more perspective.

“I've since become a mother of two small children who feature in the play, and they help me to tell the story now, which is another gorgeous sort of by-product of this whole process. There are some days in rehearsals that can be really triggering and really difficult, but it doesn't have that same hold over me or that same rawness any more,” she explains.

Next, the performer is hoping to bring the show to Australia. “It would be a full-circle moment for me. The show is home here because I’m a Limerick woman, but bringing it back to Australia where I was immobile in a hospital bed for a month, that would be on my bucket list,” she notes defiantly.

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Even though she’s high up in the air, jumping from one side of the stage to the next, what scares her most isn’t the flying.
“The flying doesn’t scare me. Having to perform the whole show myself and remembering the entire script whilst flying scares me,” she laughs. “But we’ve done it in rehearsals, so I trust that we’ll be able to do that for all of our performances.”
According to the writer and performer, being a mom as well as a creative is hard – something people don’t often realise is it is more of a juggling act  than a balancing one.

“I think it’s important that people are aware of the juggle that's involved for you to step out on stage and fly through the sky and tell your stories in a wonderful way, but also, the juggle that involves keeping a home running and kids happy, and all of that.

“It’s hard for moms to keep their hand in creatively because they're pulled in lots of different directions,” she states.

Is there something she has learned from her children? “The importance of play,” she answers in a heartbeat. “I would always have known that on some level as an actor, but over the years you kind of lose that somewhat. I don't think anyone can underestimate the power of prioritising time to play and use your imagination.”

 “The connection I have with my kids when I play with them is massive.  I hope that will carry through the teenage years and that they'll remember that we played nicely together at one point,” she says fondly.

If she could share a meal with three people, who would they be?  Judi Dench, Meryl Streep and Barack Obama would find themselves sitting at Georgina’s table.

Georgina will perform Freefalling from June 13 to 15 at the Belltable.